


do i have your a-tent-tion

by nicole_writes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canada, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Camping, F/M, Felix's No Good Very Bad Weekend, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gratuitous Canadianisms, Hiking, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, Rated M for Sylvain's Sense of Humour and Brain, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28248705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicole_writes/pseuds/nicole_writes
Summary: The Faerghus Four go camping and Ingrid really wishes that she took more than three years of high school French.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 27
Kudos: 40





	do i have your a-tent-tion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emiwaka29](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emiwaka29/gifts).



> HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY EMI. I'M POSTING THIS A WEEK EARLY BUT IDC. I hope you know that I wrote fucking 8k for no reason because I thought it would be funny specifically for the last scene. 
> 
> warnings ahead for the ~french language~ because I swear I'm mostly bilingual and I am Canadian. also warnings ahead for Canada and the fact that _all of these things are real and experienced and I'm not really sorry_
> 
> because, and i swear this is real, I asked emi what she wanted for her birthday and this was the response I got  
>   
> 

They’re late. She probably should have predicted that they would be, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t annoyed. Sylvain had promised that he would be on time, but low and behold, he is running late and that means they’re probably going to get stuck in traffic. She gives him an extra two minutes before she dials Dimitri’s number, knowing he is the most likely of the three guys to answer his phone. 

“Ingrid?” Dimitri says when he picks up. 

“Hey,” she replies, “where are you guys? You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago.”

Distantly, she hears Sylvain’s muffled voice and Dimitri sighs. “Felix was running late if you can believe it. Rodrigue delayed him. We’re on our way to your place now. Sylvain says two minutes.”

Ingrid rolls her eyes but nods. She hangs up the call and grabs her backpack from the floor of the apartment. She closes the apartment door behind her and locks it. Her whole building has that lingering cigarette smell, but her apartment is fine once the door is actually closed. She’s pretty sure that at least one of her neighbours has a criminal record, but she’s never been bothered by the man, so she doesn’t worry about it. 

She lugs her backpack out of the building and waits by the curb, watching for the familiar silver pick-up truck. Glenn had made them promise that they’d take good care of the truck for the weekend and he had made Sylvain promise not to let Felix anywhere near the driver’s seat. Sylvain, in exchange, had sworn to make the elder Fraldarius pay for the repairs on his BMW if anything happened to it while they were away. 

Usually, Glenn would be doing the driving himself, but he hadn’t been able to get work off this weekend to join them, so he and Sylvain had swapped cars so that Ingrid, Dimitri, Felix, and Sylvain could still go on their weekend getaway. They had offered to reschedule, but Glenn had pointed out that they wanted to get away before the high schools let out and all the campsites were all filled, so they were stuck with the first weekend of June. 

True to Dimitri’s word, she spots the truck after about two minutes as Sylvain parks across the street, waving to her from the driver’s side. Ingrid hefts her backpack up over one shoulder and looks both ways on the road. Her street is quiet so she jogs across the road. When she’s standing next to the truck, Sylvain rolls the window down, draping an arm out the window. 

“Is there space in the backseat?” she asks him. 

Sylvain peeks over his shoulder, glancing at Felix, and then looks back at her. “You’d better throw it in the back.”

Ingrid nods and steps to the back of the truck. She pops the tonneau cover and chucks her bag in. It lands half on top of what looks like a tent bag and slides next to the cooler which she hopes is actually full of what she asked Sylvain to bring and not just beer. She closes the truck box and then heads back around the side, opening the door to the backseat and getting in. 

She does up her seatbelt while Sylvain fiddles with the radio in the front seat and then she smiles at both Dimitri and Felix. Dimitri nods to her from the passenger seat and she thinks that Felix nods too, but his arms are crossed and he is focused on glaring at Sylvain who has just settled on a radio station. 

“For fucks sake,” Felix groans. 

Ingrid resists the urge to smile as Sylvain turns up the volume on the channel, pressing her hand to her mouth so that Felix doesn’t see her laughing at him. Immediately in the front seat, Dimitri starts humming along to the music and Felix bangs his head against the window. 

“Isn’t the rule that if you’re the driver you’re not the DJ?” Felix grumbles to Sylvain. 

Sylvain leans on the rest between the front seats and grins at both Ingrid and Felix. “But that’s no fun. Besides, Ing and Dimitri aren’t complaining!”

“That’s because they _like_ country music,” Felix mutters. He reaches into the small daypack at his feet and fishes out a pair of headphones. “I’m just going to ignore you.” 

Sylvain laughs and Ingrid’s eyes unintentionally fix on the dimples in his cheeks as he spins back around to the driver’s seat and puts the car in gear. “Everyone ready for that sweet, sweet four-plus hour drive.”

Ingrid straightens up in her seat. “We’re stopping at Tim’s right?”

Dimitri laughs. “Of course we are.”

Ingrid relaxes and then smiles. “Alright, and you guys got everything on the list?”

“Yup,” Sylvain agrees, doing a shoulder check as he pulls out onto the road. “Don’t worry, Grid, we’re good.” 

She nods and leans back, settling into her seat as Sylvain turns onto 101 Street West. There’s nothing but the classic traffic of midtown Edmonton as they drive down 101 towards the nearest Tim Hortons. Sylvain pulls into the drive-through and waves to the rest of the car. 

“Alright, orders up folks!”  
  
They all relayed their usual orders to Sylvain (black coffee for Felix, chamomile tea for Dimitri, a double-double for Sylvain himself, and a coffee with milk for Ingrid) and then Sylvain relays the orders to the poor, underpaid student working the drive-thru and adds on a 50 pack of Timbits which Ingrid will undoubtedly eat half of (or more) herself. 

After the brief pitstop at Tim Hortons and the acquisition of donuts and coffee, they finally get onto the highway. Despite Ingrid’s worries, the traffic getting out of Edmonton isn’t too bad and they’re on the Yellowhead without too much trouble. To save Felix’s sanity, Sylvain does switch it off of the country station after they’ve been driving for about half an hour, handing his phone back to Ingrid so that she can pick a playlist. She picks one that features a healthy mix of country and rock music so that Felix doesn’t have to hurl himself out of the car. 

Sylvain sings along to most of the songs and Ingrid alternates between kicking his seat so that he focuses on the road ahead of him and humming along with him. Dimitri doesn’t sing along, instead, spending most of the drive mulling over a large, paper copy of a map. Felix keeps his headphones in for a while, but eventually, he gets into an argument with Dimitri over the practicality of a paper map when the campsite that they’re going to is going to have cell service for most, if not all of the drive, especially since it’s far from the first time they’ve driven to Jasper. 

They stop for gas in Edson and Dimitri and Sylvain argue about who is going to pay for the tank of gas until Felix swoops in and pays for it while they’re arguing. They both stare at him in horror until he explains that Glenn had asked him to do that since he couldn’t make it on the trip. Sylvain is placated by this information, but Dimitri is still a bit miffed. He makes up for it by buying an armful of snacks from the Petro-Pass snack rack while the rest of them take turns using the bathroom. 

They get stuck in traffic after they pass Hinton and they end up rolling down the windows and singing along to whatever embarrassing old music Dimitri can find on Sylvain’s phone, much to Felix’s chagrin. Ingrid does spy him tapping his foot along to the beat of one of the songs as they do, so she doesn’t count it as a complete loss. 

Sylvain pays for the park pass at the entrance to Jasper and Ingrid presses against the window, admiring the luscious landscapes of the Canadian Rockies as they finally enter the National Park. Felix straightens up a bit and even Dimitri is a bit awestruck. It doesn’t matter how many times they’ve come to Jasper, the views here are absolutely breathtaking. 

It looks, as Glenn has once described it, like they’re driving through some perfectionist’s diorama. All the trees look perfectly sculpted and the lakes are a colour of blue that makes them seem absolutely fake. Of course, it’s just a product of the glacier water that feeds into them, but the whole affair is absolutely breathtaking. 

The rest of the time they spend driving seems to disappear into nothing and soon enough, Sylvain is turning into the Whistlers Campground. He slows down to almost a crawl as he drives the winding roads of the campsite. 

“Someone tell me when you see site 14,” Sylvain instructs. 

Ingrid peers out her window, studying the little wooden posts on the ground that stake out each campsite. Most of the sites are occupied, but there are a few that are empty. They drive past a bathroom building which Ingrid notices does have running water and showers which is a pleasant surprise. 

“There it is!” Dimitri exclaims suddenly, pointing out his side of the truck to the campsite marked number 14. 

It takes Sylvain a few tries to actually successfully reverse into the campsite, much to Felix’s glee as he continually jabs at Sylvain. Sylvain reminds them that his car is much smaller and almost nothing like Glenn’s truck, but Felix must be feeling particularly petulant which probably has to do with the fact that Glenn still doesn’t trust his little brother with driving the truck. 

As soon as Sylvain parks the car, Ingrid opens the door and jumps out, landing on the dirt-packed ground of the campsite. It smells like pine up here and Ingrid smiles. A breeze blows by and she shivers. It’s colder up here than it had been down in the city. Sylvain laughs at her. 

“Where’s your coat, Grid?”

She rolls her eyes at him and walks towards the rear of the truck. “It’s in my bag.”

Felix has already popped the back of the truck, folding back the tonneau cover, and he’s standing in the bed, passing stuff down to Dimitri. Ingrid waits until Felix and Dimitri have offloaded the cooler before she points to her bag. Felix tosses it to her and she slings it over one shoulder, dragging it towards the middle of the campsite where they’re piling all their stuff before they make camp. 

She drops her bag and unzips the top, pulling out the fleece jacket that she had rolled on the top. She shrugs it on and zips the quarter-zip up and turns back to the truck. Sylvain is walking towards her, holding their camp stove and he pauses when he sees her, frowning at her fleece. 

“Is that mine?”

Ingrid blinks and looks down. It’s branded with the logo from their old high school and it’s too big to have been hers. It could be Sylvain’s. “Maybe?” she says. 

Sylvain blinks and then something crosses his expression that Ingrid can’t quite read. It’s not quite glee but it’s also not annoyance either and Ingrid just gives him a weird look and steps past him to help Dimitri unload the pop-up tent from the back of the truck. After the pop-up tent, Felix hands Ingrid and Sylvain two camp chairs each and passes Dimitri the two tent bags. 

Then, Felix jumps out of the box and closes the back of the trunk as they all gather in the centre of their campsite. Sylvain rests one end of a chair he’s carrying on the ground and looks at Dimitri who is still holding both tent bags. 

“So,” he starts, “are we drawing for straws this time?”

“I’m not sharing with Sylvain,” Felix says immediately, cutting the redhead off. Dimitri drops the two tent bags on the ground and looks at Ingrid helplessly. She looks at Felix who just crosses his arms and scowls. 

Ingrid looks between Sylvain and Felix. “What did you do?” she asks Sylvain.

Sylvain shrugs. “Apparently I snore.”

Ingrid shakes her head. “Of course.” She looks between Dimitri and Sylvain. They’re both far from small people, Dimitri especially, so it would be a bit unfair to shove them in the same tent and expect them both to fit and stay dry. “Dimitri, are you alright to share with Felix then?”

Dimitri nods. “I don’t have a problem with it.” 

Felix’s brow knits as he looks between Ingrid and Sylvain. He doesn’t say anything, but the suspicious look on his face is enough to make Ingrid feel a little awkward. She bites her lip, but pushes past the feeling, looking back at Sylvain. He’s grinning at her. 

“Guess that means it’s you and me, Griddle!” 

She punches him in the arm. “Call me that again and you’ll sleep in the truck, dumbass.” 

Sylvain gives her a wide, gleeful grin that tells her he is absolutely unashamed and will be calling her that at least several more times during this trip. She sighs and grabs one of the tent bags from the ground, lifting it up and carrying it towards the back of the campsite where there is space for them to pitch the tent. Sylvain picks up a groundsheet and follows her. 

Thankfully, Sylvain keeps his mouth shut as they methodically set up the tent. They spread the groundsheet and then unroll the tent, lining it up. Sylvain assembles the poles while Ingrid starts clipping them into the tent. He follows her directions well when it’s time to bend the poles and raise the tent into an actual tent-shape and they manage to clip the bottoms of the poles into place neatly. 

His height is also a tremendous help when they pull the fly over the top. Ingrid attaches the clips at the front of the fly to the doorway of the tent and then walks around to the backside, grabbing the rope and pulling it out to pull the fly taught. She opens her mouth to ask Sylvain to bring her the pegs and hammer, but he hands it to her before she has to say anything.

“Thanks,” she says, surprised.

He grins. “We’ve done this a few times before, Grid. I remember the process. Besides, this way we’ll be done before Felix and Dimitri.”

Ingrid pounds in the first peg and then peers around the edge of the tent and sees that Dimitri and Felix are bickering over something and their tent is still lying flat on the ground, not even fully upright yet. The competitive part of Ingrid revels in the fact, but she keeps that to herself and rolls her eyes at Sylvain. 

“Let’s just waterproof the tent first before we brag,” she suggests, moving to grab the loop on the side of the fly which also needs to be pegged out. 

Sylvain flashes another smile and hands her another peg. They work quickly to finish getting their tent set up and then they walk over to the pile of their stuff in the centre of the campground. Felix and Dimitri have moved onto putting their fly on, but Sylvain and Ingrid had finished first. 

Ingrid grabs her bag and drags it over to the tent, unzipping the door and tossing it inside. She drops down to her knees, half in the tent, and then kicks off her boots, leaving her shoes on the sliver of groundsheet between the edge of the tent and where the fly stops covering. She turns, sitting on her butt and reaches out for Sylvain’s bag. 

He passes it through the open entrance to her and then hands her two thermarests. Ingrid slides back, across the floor of the tent until she reaches the far side, and starts undoing the straps on the rests. She has them both unbuckled by the time that Sylvain kicks off his shoes and crams into the tent with her. 

The tent feels crowded with both of them in there, especially because Sylvain takes up more room than she does, but it’s not too small for the purpose. She passes him a thermarest and they maneuver so that they spread both mattresses out on the floor of the tent. Ingrid unbuckles her sleeping bag and starts pulling it out of her stuffsack. Sylvain pauses, checking his phone for something and she raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Everything good?”

Sylvain nods and locks his phone, tossing it to the end of the tent. “Yeah. Just a text from work.”

“We have service up here?”

“Not enough for a reply,” Sylvain says. “It came through while we were driving.” 

He reaches out, pulling the sack off the bottom of her sleeping bag. He shoves it to the end of the tent and then tugs on her arm, pulling her onto his rest. She crouches next to him as she spreads out her sleeping bag over her thermarest and then she crawls forward, back onto her sleeping stuff. 

Sylvain grabs the back of her fleece and laughs. He presses his fingers into the back of her neck. “It is mine!” he says, sounding victorious. 

Ingrid twists, wriggling in the sweater until she can see the back where the stitched “S.G.” sits right below the collar. She tugs out of his grip and readjusts her sweater. 

“I’ve had it for years. Are you going to ask for it back?”

“Nah,” Sylvain says. “I was just going to say that you looked good in it.”

He immediately busies himself with setting up his own bedding and Ingrid blinks, staring at him for a moment. She’s not entirely sure that he had meant to say that, nor is she exactly sure what it is supposed to mean. She drops her gaze away from him and follows his lead, combing through the rest of her stuff to get her side of the tent organized before she pushes her bag to the foot of her bed and adjusts it so that it won’t press against the walls of the tent. 

On her knees, she turns back around to Sylvain only to shriek as he grabs the neck of his shirt and pulls it over his head, leaving him shirtless. Ingrid gapes at her friend and almost chokes as Sylvain’s eyes widen and he stares at her. For a second, they both sit there awkwardly until Ingrid flails her hands up and snaps her head away from Sylvain. 

“Why did you just strip?” she demands. 

“Uh, because I’m putting a warmer shirt on?”

She glances back at him as he shrugs a henley on. The long sleeve is ribbed and tight-fitting, clinging to his broad shoulders. He raises an eyebrow when he catches her looking after he straightens it out. 

“You good, Ingrid?”

She nods and pulls her phone out of her pocket, desperate for any distraction. Thankfully, she has one bar of service and an unread text from Annette. Sylvain scoots back in the tent, unzipping the door again and sliding partway out of the tent. He pauses. 

“You coming? I think we should probably get the pop-up set up and start on dinner.”

Ingrid waves her phone at him. “I’ll be just a minute. I have a bar and battery power right now and I want to reply to Annette.”

Sylvain nods and then he disappears, zipping up the tent behind him. Ingrid huffs and slaps the back of her hand against her cheeks. Her face is warm and she’s blushing and she really wishes that she wasn’t. 

She opens her conversation with Annette and reads the last message from her friend. 

Annette Dominic  
  
Don't forget to snuggle up to Sylvain if it gets cold ;)))  
  
ANNETTE  
  


She drops her phone into her lap and groans, covering her face with both hands. Of course, Annette would tease her like this. She had been one of the first people, besides Mercedes and Dorothea, to find out that Ingrid liked Sylvain. Ingrid, honestly, had been one of the last people to figure out that she liked Sylvain. 

Everyone keeps telling her that he likes her back, but Ingrid is too petrified to try anything because she does not want to mess up her and Sylvain’s friendship. They’ve been friends for so long that Ingrid can’t imagine being the one to drive a wedge between them now. Besides, Sylvain is a serial flirt so it’s not like Ingrid can take anything he says seriously anyway. 

Her phone buzzes and she lifts it up, opening Annette’s reply. 

Annette Dominic  
  
Okay but are you bunking with him???  
  
….Yes  
Perfect. Just cuddle with him at night.  
Felix says he snores.  
Does he?  
I mean, probably.  
Oh well. Wouldn’t it be a shame if he happened to walk in on you getting changed?  
adfsdgfjkl  
ANNETTE  
IT WOULD WORK. JUST JUMP HIM INGRID.   
FELIX AND DIMITRI ARE RIGHT THERE.  
  


She closes out of the conversation before Annette can reply and shuts off her phone completely. She drops it in the middle of her bed and crawls across the tent to follow Sylvain out. He has a point in that they should probably get going with their dinner before it gets too dark to use the stove effectively. 

When she emerges from the tent she notices that her friends have beaten her to the punch. The pop-up is set up above the picnic table and Felix is already working at something on the stove. Dimitri is standing down the driveway of the campsite, talking with a park ranger and completing their registration and Sylvain is crouched in front of the fire pit, trying to start a fire. 

Ingrid zips the tent up behind her and pulls on her boots, wandering over to Felix. He’s cooking burgers in a frying pan and he nods to her in greeting. 

“Took your time,” he comments. 

Ingrid shrugs. “Had to send a message to Annette and I wanted to get all my stuff laid out.”

Felix nods and flips one of the burgers. “Can you do the salad?”

“Yup.” She glances over her shoulder at Sylvain. “How’s the fire?”

He looks up, grinning. There’s a smudge of black on his cheek. “Just caught, actually. I’ll see if Dimitri needs anything and then make a run to the bathroom. Do you guys need help?”

“No,” Felix replies. “We’re good.”

* * *

Dinner goes relatively smoothly and it’s still not quite completely dark by the time that they settle into their chairs around the campfire, watching the fire crackle and burn. Ingrid had placed her chair between Dimitri and Felix, intent on sitting as far away from Sylvain as possible, but that only ends up having the added effect of having to stare at him over the glow of the flames where he sits across from her. 

Sylvain looks annoyingly good in the firelight. He’s wearing a jacket now over his henley, but his pants are cuffed at the ankles and he’s reclining, chatting about something or another, with his feet linked out in front of him close to the fire. 

Ingrid drops her gaze down to the fire so that she’s not quite so obviously ogling her best friend and soon to be tent-mate as Sylvain continues telling his story. It reaches a natural end shortly after and the four of them sit in comfortable silence around the fire for another few minutes. 

One of the logs pops and crumbles inward, breaking the nice structure that Sylvain had built and the fire dims, starting to die down. Ingrid takes that as her cue to start getting ready for bed. According to her watch, it’s only 9, but there isn’t much to do now that it’s getting dark, so they may as well move the food into the truck so that they don’t attract a bear overnight. 

Ingrid folds up her chair and the others copy her lead. She passes her chair off to Felix and she and Dimitri pack up the stove and the cooler, carrying them over to the truck. Sylvain is peering down the driveway of the campsite curiously when she gets over to the truck and she follows his gaze to two young women who are bickering on the road in front of their campsite. 

She exchanges a look with Sylvain and he shrugs, but then the girls seem to notice that they have an audience. One of them, a brunette, brightens when she sees both Sylvain and Ingrid looking at them. Ingrid immediately notices that she seems extra fixated on Sylvain. 

“Excuse-moi!” she calls out, waving. Her friend, with inky black hair, grabs her arm and also sends them a wave. “Parlez-vous français? Nous recherchons des directions!”

Ingrid sighs and waves Sylvain on. He’s the only one of the four of them who took more than the required three years of French in high school since he did French Immersion. He grins and walks towards them. 

“Oui! Où avez-vous besoin d’aller?” he asks.

Ingrid turns back to the truck, trying to smother the frown that wants to set in her expression. Felix scoffs and crosses his arms. Ingrid glances at him and sees that he’s glaring down the driveway at where Sylvain is now definitely flirting with the two girls in French. 

“Five bucks says that he gets invited to their tent tonight,” Felix grumbles. 

Ingrid bites the inside of her cheek. She doesn’t take Felix’s bet, nor does she wait for Dimitri to accept it as she walks away from the truck, instinctively walking towards Sylvain. He’s in the middle of actually giving directions to the two girls and Ingrid’s heart almost flutters as she listens to his French. His accent is flawless and his voice is almost too smooth. By the looks on the faces of the girls he’s speaking to, Ingrid knows that they know it too. 

The brunette’s eyes dart to Ingrid as soon as she approaches and the star-struck look that girls often have when looking at Sylvain slips a bit. Ingrid puts a hand on her hip. She doesn’t really want to get into a cat-fight with these French-speaking tourists, but she will absolutely rein Sylvain in if necessary. 

“Êtes-vous sa copine?” the brunette asks Ingrid almost immediately.

Ingrid’s French is incredibly rusty and she blanks on the last half of the question, looking to Sylvain for help. He just grins in response. 

“Oui,” he agrees. “Je m’appelle Sylvain et elle s’appelle Ingrid. Elle est ma copine.” 

The brunette’s smile slips and the black-haired girl sighs and mumbles something under her breath. Ingrid is confused. Sylvain had obviously introduced them, she knows that much, but she can’t, for the life of her, remember what copine translates to in English. 

“Well,” the black-haired girl says, suddenly speaking English, albeit with a strong French accent. “Merci, Sylvain. Your directions were very helpful.” Her eyes dart over Ingrid and her smile hardens. “Have a lovely night.”

The girls leave then without further fanfare and Sylvain turns to walk back into the campsite like it’s nothing and Ingrid grabs his arm. 

“Wait a minute,” she says. “What does copine mean?”

“Oh,” Sylvain says, grinning. “It means friend. Why?”

She drops his arm, pressing her lips together. She shakes her head. “No reason. I was just curious.” 

* * *

About an hour later, they’re all getting settled in their tents and Ingrid is just waiting for Sylvain to come back into the tent after disappearing to the bathroom facilities to brush his teeth. Ingrid wiggles into her sleeping bag, letting her flashlight dangle in the netting at the top of the tent, casting a wonky yellow glow around the tent. 

She is just zipping up her sleeping bag when the tent door opens and Sylvain crawls in. He deposits his stuff at the foot of his sleeping bag and then adjusts, sitting back over the centre of his bed. 

“Hey,” he whispers, “are you asleep?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, Sylvain, I’m obviously still awake.”

He winks at her. “Just checking.” He shifts, sliding into his sleeping bag, and then he reaches up, snagging her flashlight out of the netting. “Can I shut this off?”

Ingrid closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. “Go ahead.” 

Sylvain shuts the light off and then lies down. Like this, they’re almost close enough for their arms to brush and if Ingrid lets her hand stray even a bit to the right, she will be touching his sleeping bag. A little alarmed and a little embarrassed, she rolls onto her left side, facing the wall of the tent. 

“Good night, Sylvain.” 

* * *

Ingrid wakes up the next morning completely twisted up in her sleeping bag. She has managed to pull both her arms out of it and she has one arm wrapped around Sylvain’s waist while the other is gripping his shirt. Naturally, the only thing she can do is absolutely panic as she flails back from Sylvain. 

He groans, definitely not fully awake and his arm tightens around her, pressing them together. Ingrid is lying half in between their thermarests and she has a massive kink in her neck. She shoves his shoulder. 

“Sylvain!” she hisses. “Let go!” 

He grunts, but this time he does let go and she watches him stir fully. She rolls away from him and sits up, pushing her sleeping bag down her waist as Sylvain wakes up. He yawns and wiggles out of his own sleeping bag, propping himself up on one elbow. He rubs his eyes and frowns. 

“Morning?” he mumbles. 

Sylvain’s voice is still rough with sleep and his hair is an absolute mess, but of course, he looks good. He always does and Ingrid twists so that she’s facing the tent wall so that Sylvain can’t see the flush that takes over her face. 

Behind her, she hears Sylvain shift and he lets out another low groan. “Oh, fuck, it’s already 8? Weren’t we going hiking today?”

That gets Ingrid going and she jolts, immediately reaching for her bag at the foot of the tent. “Yes! We have to get going.”

She digs out a long-sleeved shirt from her bag and a sports bra and doesn’t think twice before stripping her pyjama shirt off and pulling on her bra and shirt. Sylvain lets out a garbled choking noise and Ingrid freezes, one arm through her sleeve. 

She determinedly keeps facing away from him as she hurriedly pulls on her shirt the rest of the way. She grabs her pants and crawls back to her sleeping bag, shifting around until she manages to successfully change. Usually, she and Sylvain are comfortable enough with each other doing these things because they’ve known each other for so long, but something about this weekend trip, in particular, has really thrown them off. 

Ingrid hunches down in her sleeping bag as Sylvain collects his clothes and slips out of the tent, obviously going to go change in the bathroom like a smart person. She pauses after he leaves the tent, burying her face in her hands and trying not to scream. 

She is absolutely going to lose her mind. 

* * *

Sylvain drives them to the guest lot for the hike without hardly saying a word or looking at Ingrid, even when Dimitri tries to make pleasant conversation over breakfast. Ingrid is too awkward to try and approach the situation, so she talks with Dimitri instead, trying to ignore the weirdness between her and Sylvain. 

The parking lot is already busy, but thankfully, they’d bought their parking pass and entry pass with their park pass when arriving in Jasper yesterday. Sylvain’s parking job of the truck is much better this time so Felix doesn’t get to harp on him. 

Ingrid is excited before they even climb out of the truck. Edith Cavell is one of her favourite hikes. She had first gone on it when she was 17 and it’s been a favourite ever since. Once they’re parked, they gear up, putting on coats and distributing water and snacks between the four of them. 

It’s still a bit early in the season for this hike, but it’s better than trying to do it mid-summer. They’re all seasoned hikers by this point and they’ve done this hike in particular 3 or 4 times each. Ingrid puts a foot up on the tailgate of the truck as she yanks her boot laces tight, threading the laces through the eyes of the boots with practiced ease. 

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable this morning,” Sylvain says suddenly, appearing in her peripheral. 

Ingrid pauses and looks up at him. He already has his boots laced and his bag on and he looked genuinely sheepish. She smiles and shakes her head. 

“It’s fine, Sylvain. Some of that is on me. Don’t worry too much.”

“Cool.” He nods and his shoulders straighten like she had literally taken a load off his back. It’s kind of cute in a dorky way. 

“We’re all good as soon as you help me with my boots,” she says, nodding to the laces she’s yanking on. 

Sylvain laughs but steps closer to her, using his leverage and strength to tighten her shoes properly. He ties them off and pats her on the shin, grinning. 

“All good then.”

* * *

The hike is long and beautiful and Ingrid spends entirely too long taking pictures on it. Sylvain humours her, lingering back, as Dimitri and Felix push forward, neither of them the type to really stop and capture the view. In the end, she and Sylvain end up finishing almost ten minutes after Felix and Dimitri. 

  


They spend ten minutes stretching out stiff muscles in the parking lot at the end and Ingrid swaps back to her sneakers, letting her feet breathe. She shows off the better photos she had taken and queues them in a message to send to Glenn to make him jealous. The message doesn’t send because of a lack of service, but it’ll send once they get into Jasper proper, where they’re planning on grabbing dinner before they head back to Whistlers. 

* * *

A long day later, they all take showers in the bathroom facilities and play cards around the table in the campsite until it’s almost black outside. Dimitri is the first to yawn and cave, but Ingrid herself feels sleepy not long after. She taps out of the game that Felix and Sylvain are playing and goes to gather her toiletries. 

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” she calls to them as she walks out of the campsite. Sylvain lifts a hand in acknowledgement. 

Ingrid lights the path ahead of her with her flashlight as she wanders through the campsite. Even though there had been the awkwardness between them in the morning, the hike had let her and Sylvain fall back into normal patterns of joking and teasing, but she had caught him staring at her more than a few times when she had stopped to take pictures. She isn’t quite sure what to make of that information, Annette’s suggestive text messages not-withstanding. 

She shakes her head, chasing the thought away as she reaches the bathroom. The light is on outside and she opens the door, exiting from the outdoors. To her surprise, the brunette from the night before that had stopped by their campsite for directions is standing in front of one of the sinks, washing her face. 

Ingrid hesitates for a moment but then stays the course, moving around the girl to position herself at the second sink. She puts her toiletries down and manages to get through brushing her teeth and washing her face before the other girl turns to her. Ingrid packs up her things quickly, hoping that she won’t have to have a butchered French conversation when the girl starts talking. 

“Your boyfriend is very attractive,” she comments casually. Her accent is very strong and Ingrid, for a second, thinks that she has misheard. 

“What?” Ingrid asks, frowning and turning to face the brunette. 

The girl puts a hand on her hip. “Your boyfriend. The one who gave us directions last night. I think he said Sylvain? With the red hair and the pretty brown eyes.”

Ingrid shakes her head frantically. “Oh, no, he’s definitely not my boyfriend. Just my friend.”

The girl blinks. “Vraiment?” She looks confused. “But, he introduced you as his girlfriend.”

Ingrid laughs and shakes her head again. “No, he said he called me his friend.”

The brunette smirks and flips her hair over her shoulder. “Well, sure, copain and copine can mean friend, but really, they’re mostly used for boyfriend and girlfriend. If he had wanted to call you ‘friend’, he would have said mon amie or even ma meilleure amie.”

Ingrid opens and closes her mouth, English betraying her. The brunette laughs and reaches out, patting Ingrid’s arm. 

“Look, if a boy that handsome is calling you his girlfriend, you should probably do something about it. I could tell, by the way, that he felt that way because he looked at you as soon as you walked over like there was no one else there.”

She stepped away then, walking out of the bathroom and leaving Ingrid’s heart and mind racing. She slaps her hands against her cheeks and then turns the sink on, lightly flicking some cool water on her face. It doesn’t, however, make the girl’s words less true. 

Sylvain is fluent in French. Sylvain has been fluent in French for years. There is absolutely no way that Sylvain, _who is fluent in French_ , mixed up copine and amie when speaking to people he had never met before. That means, in all likelihood, that he had intentionally called her his girlfriend and _then he had lied to her when she had asked what copine meant_. 

Ingrid gathers up her things quickly and hurries back to the campsite. Felix and Sylvain are still sitting at the picnic table when she gets back. Felix looks up as she approaches and then immediately puts his cards down on the table, shoving them over to Sylvain. He gathers up both of the empty beer cans in front of the two of them and gets up from the table, walking away without a word. 

Sylvain blinks, watching as Felix walks away. Then he notices Ingrid is back and smiles. “Hey. All good?”

She frowns and walks past him to the tent. She hears him get up and follow her, but she just unzips the tent, dumps her stuff inside, and then leans back out, doing up the zipper again. She spins around, opening her mouth to berate him and almost collides with him as he had closed the distance between them effectively. 

Sylvain looks mildly concerned and irritatingly attractive. All of the things she has been planning on saying–variations of “am I your girlfriend?”, “why did you call me your girlfriend?”, and “why did you lie to me?”–all die in her mouth and she gapes at him for a second. 

“Grid?”

Ingrid closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Then, she grabs Sylvain by the front of his shirt and drags him to the back of the campsite and about ten feet into the woods, away from where Felix and Dimitri might hear them. Sylvain’s eyes go wide as she grabs him, but he doesn’t resist, holding his hands up in surrender as she hauls him after her. 

Once they’re suitably far from the campsite, Ingrid drops his shirt and jabs him in the chest with her index finger. “What the fuck, Sylvain?”

He blinks. “What?”

“ _Copine_ ,” she snaps. 

Realization dawns on his face and his eyes widen dramatically. “Ingrid, I can–”

She smacks herself in the face. “Sylvain, you called me your girlfriend. And you did it intentionally. And then you lied to me.”

He scratches the back of his head. “Ing.”

This time she hits him, lightly smacking the heel of her hand against his shoulder. “And you thought I just wouldn’t figure it out? Sylvain, I may not be fluent, but I’m not–”

Ingrid is abruptly cut off in the middle of her lecture as Sylvain grabs her face and kisses her. Her eyes widen as his lips move firmly against hers for a second. It takes her a full second to restart her brain because _Sylvain is kissing her_. Sylvain is kissing her and they are like thirty feet from Dimitri and Felix’s tent and she wants him to _keep kissing her_. 

Her brain resets and she grabs Sylvain’s face before he can pull away and returns the kiss. Sylvain backs up, still holding onto her, until he bumps into a tree. Ingrid rocks up on her tiptoes, keeping their lips together until she literally can’t breathe and she has to pull back. Sylvain’s arms wrap around her waist, keeping her pressed against him as he leans back against the tree. 

For a second, they say nothing, their chests heaving and Ingrid stares at Sylvain. His hair is all messed up–thanks to her–and his bottom lip is red from the pressure of the kiss. She’s sure she looks just as mussed. 

“Uh,” Sylvain mutters. His hands tighten on her waist. “So that just happened.” 

Ingrid presses her lips together to hold back a smile as she pats Sylvain’s chest. “Right,” she agrees, her gaze still fixed on his lips. 

“Ingrid,” Sylvain starts, his voice dropping into a huskier, unfairly sexy tone. “Can I kiss you again? Preferably not in the woods where there is a branch pressed against my back?”

She giggles at that and then feels a bit shy, looking down at Sylvain’s arms where they’re wrapped around her. “You want to?”

Sylvain lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Grid, I literally just kissed you until I couldn’t breathe, cuddled with you in my sleep, and told someone that you were my girlfriend and you don’t think that I want to kiss you?”

She covers her face. “I don’t know!” she mumbles. “You’ve kind of been giving me mixed signals for a while!”

Sylvain hugs her, chuckling. “Ingrid, the only mixed signals I have been trying to send are the ones from half my brain telling me to romance you tenderly and the ones from the other half of my brain which are telling me to tear all of your clothes off and fuck you until you’re screaming.”

Her entire body tenses at his words. Pressed completely against him against a tree, Ingrid belatedly realizes that their activities have had _other_ effects. She drops her hands and grips Sylvain’s forearms. 

“Oh,” she mutters. 

Sylvain kisses her forehead. “Now, please, can we take this somewhere that’s not in the forest? Because I would really like to kiss you again.”

Ingrid can’t hide her smiles at that as she steps back, catching Sylvain’s hand in hers, and then pulls him back to the campsite. He grins all the way back to the tent and Ingrid barely manages to get the tent unzipped before he’s nuzzling the back of her neck, trying to kiss her again. She laughs and draws out of his reach, kicking off her boots and crawling into the tent. 

Sylvain practically trips into the tent after her, pausing only briefly to zip up the fly and the tent door. When he’s sitting on his bedding, Ingrid grabs his shoulder and shoves him down, pushing him flat on his back and crawling on top of him. She kisses him again and Sylvain immediately wraps an arm around her, trying to pull her flush against him as he hums into the kiss. 

He manages to push up against her and sit up, hooking his arms around her so that she slides into his lap as he kisses her furiously. Ingrid makes a breathy noise as his mouth wanders, kissing up the side of her face. His two-day scruff scratches and tickles and she giggles. 

She pulls back out of the kiss and runs a hand through his hair, messing it up further. She admires it with a smile and Sylvain raises an eyebrow. 

“What are you smiling about?”

She ruffles his hair. “You,” she says easily. 

He hums and tilts his head, kissing the hinge of her jaw slowly. “I’m the real winner here,” he says. “Got the most beautiful girl in my lap and maybe she won’t punch me when I call her my girlfriend next time.”

Ingrid rolls her eyes. “You could have just asked, Sylvain. I don’t think I was being particularly subtle. Felix definitely knew.”

He chuckles and kisses her neck chastely. “Funny. He knew about me too.” His hand tightens on her hip. “And as for the asking part, that’s not as fun.”

She pinches his ear as he presses another slow, lazy kiss to her neck, this one a bit further down, towards her collarbone. “For you, maybe. My French isn’t that good.”

“Ah, mais, ce n’est pas mon problème, _ma copine_. Simplement, je pense que tu es très jolie, Ingrid. Jolie et sexy.”

She shoves him back for that one and he laughs, letting her push him back onto his back. He grins up at her and pats her hip with one hand. His other hand wanders, reaching blindly for his bag. She watches him pull a plastic bag out of the outside pocket of his bag and her eyes widen when she realizes what the contents of the bag are. 

“Sylvain!” she squeaks. “Have you been planning this? How could you have expected this?”

He laughs. He leaves the bag next to him on his sleeping bag and runs his hands up her sides, slowly pushing her shirt up. Ingrid lets him pull it up and over her head and she shivers at the cool night air once he gets it off. He slips his fingers under the band of her sports bra as he tugs her down to him, pressing his lips to her collarbone. 

“You’re really going to ask me that question when I’ve only been trying to seduce you for like the last six months?”

Ingrid’s mouth drops open and Sylvain cups her face, dragging her lips back down to his. Her hands end up in his hair again as she adjusts herself over him. Sylvain drags her bottom lip between his teeth and she almost whines. He hushes her quietly, pressing a light kiss to the corner of her mouth. As he starts kissing down the side of her neck again, she presses her palms to his chest and pushes him back down, pulling away. 

She frowns down at him. “This is a horrible idea.” Ingrid starts tugging on his shirt until he wriggles out of it, tossing it over to her side of the tent. She appreciatively touches his chest. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Right. A bad idea. And you just removed my shirt. Next, you’re going to tell me that you want to just roll over and go to sleep?”

Ingrid blushes and covers her face. “No,” she mumbles, muffling her confession. 

He chuckles and gently pulls one of her hands down, kissing her fingers. His other hand strokes her waist. “We’ll be fine Ingrid.” 

Suddenly, he surges up, rolling them onto her side of the tent. He kisses her nose. “You just,” he kisses the corner of her mouth, “have to remember,” he presses a much less innocent kiss to her neck, “to be quiet.”

His hands slide lower and she squirms under him, her head tilting back. Ingrid flails one hand up and snags the zipper on the window vent on the tent wall on her side. She jerks on it until the zipper slides down, partially opening the vent. Sylvain’s grin turns wicked and then his head and hands are trailing downwards and they don’t do any more talking. 

* * *

Ingrid wakes up before Sylvain again. His arm is draped over her waist again, but this time it’s not as uncomfortable since they had spread his sleeping bag out under them and used hers as a blanket on top. They had, for the sake of appearances and the weather, redressed last night after she had kicked Sylvain out briefly to throw out the garbage. 

She wriggles out from under him and grabs the quarter-zip fleece with his initials on it, pulling it over her head. She crawls over Sylvain and unzips the door to the tent, slipping outside. She pulls on her boots and leaves the fly, zipping the tent up behind her. She stretches her arms over her head as she walks out to the centre of the campsite. 

Felix and Dimitri are both already up and burning the last of their firewood in the fireplace before they head out for the day. Ingrid yawns and walks into Dimitri’s line of sight. To her surprise, he immediately looks away, a flush burning up the back of his neck. She blinks and then looks at Felix who seems to have noticed her awakening. 

He looks grumpy which is not unusual for Felix, but his grumpiness is notably directed towards her. 

“Good morning?” she greets hesitantly. 

“Sleep well?” Felix asks, his tone heavily laden with sarcasm. 

At first, she doesn’t get it. Then she notices that Felix is looking past her towards hers and Sylvain’s tent. Dimitri is blushing. Felix is grumpy. 

She flushes from her head to her toes, slapping a hand over her mouth. 

Felix scoffs and looks back at the fire. His expression switches quickly to disgust. “I fucking hate you both.” 

**Author's Note:**

> RIP dimitri and felix
> 
> hap birth emi i love you <3
> 
> (thanks to my sister who i yoinked that actual photo of edith cavell from because it's a lovely hike)


End file.
